Perhaps the thing I admire most about A.G. Lafley, who recently stepped down after running Procter & Gamble for a decade, is that, in contrast to so many other CEOs, he doesn't pretend for a second that he discovered a new way to manage, or that his success resulted from any mysterious and complicated methods.

At Procter Gamble, branding is almost everything. And in the age of the Web, almost everything is up for grabs. Here's how P G has turned the Internet into a device for listening to customers — and for experimenting with its brands.